Thursday, December 18, 2014

How good was Luke Fischer's first game for Marquette? Simple, based on tempo free stats he is clearly the Player of the Year in the Country.

Defense - Fischer is the top defensive player in the country based on tempo free stats:

Blocked Shots (3rd nationally) - Fischer blocked 17.7% of Arizona State's shots in his debut. That is the third best season total in the country.

Defensive Rebounding (5th) - Fischer grabbed 31.4% of all the shots Arizona State missed. That is the fifth best figure in the country - interestingly Cinmeon Bowers of Auburn is second in the country at 34.9%

Team Defensive Rating (5th) - Marquette's adjusted team defense against Arizona State was 87.5 points per 100 trips (94.7 point per 100 trips by a team that averages 107.1 normally in a season in which the average is 99.9). Even with the shut down defense in Fischer's one game, Marquette now has the 125th best defense in the country, so they were more well over 100 spots better on defense with him in the line-up. If we just count the game in which Fischer played, the top 10 defenses this season are; 1, Louisville; 2, Kentucky; 3, Virginia; 4, Texas; 5, MARQUETTE with FISCHER; 6, Oklahoma; 7, San Diego State; 8, Wisconsin; 9, Arizona; 10, St. John's. Obviously you share credit for team defense, but if they are 5th with you and worse than 125th without you, pretty safe to say you are the man.

This easily makes him the best defensive player in the country.

Offense

Shooting - On the most important stat, Fischer has hit 81.8% of his shots, making his effective Field Goal Range (eFG% adding extra half shot made for each three-pointer made) second in the country to Lafayette's Joey Ptasinski.

Offensive Rating (21st) - Sum up all the offensive stats at www.kenpom.com, and he calculates that Fischer would produce 136.2 points per 100 times he had the ball, which ties him with Gonzaga's Kevin Pangos for 21st best offensive player in the country when he has the ball.

OK, seriously even though these are all figures from www.kenpom.com, he does not actually have the minutes played to qualify to be a leader in any category, but based just one his one game he would clearly be the National Player of the Year as the best defensive player in the country and 21st best offensive player. Obviously he will not keep up all of these numbers throughout the season, but if Marquette gets over half of what he produced against Arizona State this could be a tournament team after all. A long way to go through, and teams will certainly be watching a lot of film to make sure they position to stop his left hook ... and right hook ... and roll into a dunk ... and mid-range shot as the shot clock runs out.